The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament

Written, according to its anonymous poet, to motivate “sympyll men” toward a greater interest in Scripture, The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament presents a deft, animated late-fourteenth-century translation and expansion of Peter Comestor’s twelfth-century Historia Scholastica, the single most authorized paraphrase of the Bible for much of the Middle Ages. However, to judge the Paraphrase a mere paraphrase is to undervalue its complexity and importance; it masterfully interweaves material from numerous sources, including an Old French metrical paraphrase, the Northumbrian Middle English poem Cursor Mundi, and several other Middle English texts. In a way few other texts can claim, the Paraphrase engages a breadth of core cultural issues definitive of late medieval England: vernacular translations of the Bible, the Bible’s influence upon medieval romance and vice versa, a trend toward realism in conceptions of individual and social circumstances, cultural heterogeneity, and greater sympathy toward women and Jews.